McCaffery: Eagles are a reality show first, a football team second

There were offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, and a guy who used to coach Temple.

There were retired NFL head coaches, recently fired NFL head coaches and, as the Bears have proven, the guy who used to coach the Montreal Alouettes.

There were broadcasters. There were position coaches. There was the coach from Notre Dame, where football is said to be particularly popular.

There was even one Andrew Walter Reid.

Yet above them all, above every candidate for every NFL coaching position this year, above Norv Turner even, there was Chip Kelly.

So was there ever a doubt where the Most Interesting Man In Football would be lured to coach?

Was there a shock that the coach at the University of Oregon would be jetted to a Northeast Philadelphia airstrip, coaxed into initialing an 18-pound contract, fitted with a new, officially licensed Eagles visor and pointed toward the NewsControl Complex?

And if so, why?Since 1960, the Eagles have trafficked in one thing more than the rest: Unfulfilling football seasons. But since Jeffrey Lurie has had them in his control, beginning in 1994, they have had another habit: They...win...headlines. They win headlines, bottom-of-the-TV scrolls, tweet-counts and talk-show calls. They win attention.

Is Ricky Watters, flamboyant and unpredictable, on the market? Acquire him. Is Terrell Owens available? Trade for him and worry later if half of his teammates will attend his after-hours birthday party in Atlantic City, and the other half would rather dump the cake on his head. In fact, sign Jevon Kearse, too.

Michael Vick? Name sounds familiar. Something about jail, about dogs. Better hurry. Get him on board, and do it now, and never mind that there is already close to 200 million committed to quarterbacks. Why not? Isn’t ESPN more likely to obsess over him than over Kevin Kolb? And if that eventually means that there are too many quarterbacks on staff, then move Donovan McNabb to Washington, and do it on Easter Sunday night, on the eve of the Phillies’ opener.

By the way, who is the best free agent on the market? Is it Nnamdi Asomugha? Sign him now, figure out later how to pronounce his name. Who cares if Asante Samuel is already in place at cornerback, or if Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie is, too? And just to be safe, make sure to sign Asomugha — even if he can’t play — on the same day the Phillies acquire Hunter Pence.

The Eagles are a reality show first, a football team second.

So now, it is Kelly, whose offense at Oregon averaged 30 points a game more than Reid and Marty Mornhinweg’s just did. Sounds reasonable. At least he has coached a football team, a whole one, not just half of one, like Plan B, Gus Bradley. He might be successful, he might not. Fortunately, the NFL has a proven measuring apparatus for that: The scoreboard.

For now, there is only one way to report the score. And it is this: Jeffrey Lurie 1, Joe Banner 0. For Banner, now in charge of the Cleveland Browns, desperately desired to hire Kelly. But when all of the big-business bluffing began, Banner blinked, folded and settled for Rob Chudzinski. And that’s when Lurie doubled back and landed Kelly, whose offense is so innovative that Bill Belichick takes his advice.

That sequence alone — Banner winding up with Rob Chudzinski, the Eagles winding up with the most appealing candidate in the coaching swirl — must have resulted in such howls of laughter at One NewsControl Way that earmuffs were required for protection.

The celebration won’t last, however. It can’t. When Kelly has his introductory press conference Thursday, he will say something that annoys somebody and the landslide of criticism will begin. If he wins, he will be be on billboards. If not, some heckler will call him Kotite. That’s in his deal, too.

Kelly might struggle in a division with Robert Griffin III, Eli Manning and Tony Romo. But that’s later. As for Wednesday, the Eagles had won, and they had won big. They won the headline, the scroll, the straight number in coaching roulette.